Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable. — Rachel Cusk Criticism Copy Share Image
To be optimistic about something that is absolutely unknown to you is unfounded. — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
I have absolutely no concept of work, except for university. But I like to talk to people a lot about their jobs. — Rachel Cusk Career Copy Share Image
I absolutely don't dislike children - I would choose their company over adult company any time. — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
I think a lot of artists no longer want to participate in or be associated with narrative because of its corruptedness in… — Rachel Cusk Art Copy Share Image
“mutual frankness that she could work out who she herself was and what she actually wanted.” — Rachel Cusk Frankness Copy Share Image
Help is dangerous because it exists outside the human economy: the only payment for help is gratitude. — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
What compromises women - babies, domesticity, mediocrity - compromises writing even more. — Rachel Cusk Babies Copy Share Image
“If a man had a nasty side to his character, she wanted to get to it immediately and confront it. She didn’t… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
The woman who thinks she can choose femininity, can toy with it like the social drinker toys with wine - well, she's… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
Parenthood, like death, is an event for which it is nearly impossible to be prepared. It brings you into a new relationship… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
It is expected that a children's story will raise a difficulty and then resolve it: increasingly, this resolution is so prompt and… — Rachel Cusk Adversity Copy Share Image
“he has too much fear, so much that he is driven to enact the thing of which he is afraid, lest it… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
Human beings have a need, generally, to destroy things. The Freudian principle of civilisation is correct. There's always, always a difference between… — Rachel Cusk Civilisation Copy Share Image
I'm particularly drawn to actors in their own little drama. I find it's that area I'm very alive to. And I don't… — Rachel Cusk Actor Copy Share Image
Society in the English countryside is still strangely, quaintly divided. If black comedy and a certain type of social commentary are what… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
There is a slovenly disrespect for truth and reality that has infected and cross-infected the arts; the values of entertainment are relentlessly… — Rachel Cusk Art Copy Share Image
I think men and women are the same. Even as parents, I think we're the same. We're just conditioned to think that… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
“This feeling, of being negated at the same time as I was exposed, had had a particularly powerful effect on me, I… — Rachel Cusk Time Copy Share Image
I'm waiting for the day when my children cease to find my domestic propriety reassuring and actually find it annoying. — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
Having your second child, in case you were wondering, is a lot harder than having your first, except for those people who… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
I sometimes feel that the world is a very uncivilised place where it is meant to be at its most civilised. Where… — Rachel Cusk Angry Copy Share Image
In memoir, you have to be particularly careful not to alienate the reader by making the material seem too lived-in. It mustn't… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
A creative writing workshop will contain students whose ambitions and abilities, whose conceptions of literature itself, are so diverse that what they… — Rachel Cusk Ability Copy Share Image
Leaving things behind and starting again is a way of coping with difficulties. I learnt very early in my life that I… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
“The polarisation of man and woman was a structure, a form: she had only felt it once it was gone, and it… — Rachel Cusk Heart Copy Share Image
For years I had lived in my body half-consciously, ignoring it mostly, dismissing its agendas wherever I could, and forever pressing it… — Rachel Cusk Abuse Copy Share Image
As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
I have some pretty forceful ideas about the world - obviously I do. But I suppose I can only really speak about… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
“But I do admit that it has brought nearly all of my relationships to an end, because it is inevitable that that… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
An eating disorder epidemic suggests that love and disgust are being jointly marketed, as it were; that wherever the proposition might first… — Rachel Cusk Being Copy Share Image
Shame is something you'll find a lot of - particularly Catholic - girls feel about their bodies, about their sexuality, about their… — Rachel Cusk Body Copy Share Image
The old world of England was picturesque and safe in a way that L.A. wasn't, but it was so amazingly socially cruel.… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method… — Rachel Cusk Children Copy Share Image
It seems to me that 'women's writing' by nature would not seek equivalence in the male world. It would be a writing… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
The distinctive feature of my family was intolerance of sensitivity and emotion - 'Everything's great, it all has to be great all… — Rachel Cusk Copy Share Image
There are certain types of slightly hysterical human characters who, rather than creating, walk around with a sense of their own potential… — Rachel Cusk Art Copy Share Image
“we’ve become convinced that if we say even a word out of place we’ve marked them forever, but of course that is… — Rachel Cusk Desires Copy Share Image
As it stands, motherhood is a sort of wilderness through which each woman hacks her way, part martyr, part pioneer; a turn… — Rachel Cusk Being a mother Copy Share Image
“the disgust that exists indelibly between men and women and that you are always trying to purge with what you call frankness.… — Rachel Cusk Disgust Copy Share Image
